


After the fade

by Fatima



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Almost certainly will be Jossed, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dialogue Light, Episode Tag, Five Plus One, Gen, Minor Canonical Character(s), Not as cracky as the summary would suggest, Possibly influenced by Herzog, Post-Episode: s04e10 Monstrous, Species-ism, The hunter on the table, non-explicit reference to suicide, non-explicit reference to violence and death, take that as you will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-15 01:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2209980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fatima/pseuds/Fatima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five mistakes the hunter made, but in hindsight it was really six and one of them wasn't a mistake so it was five after all, and one time he did the right thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the fade

**Author's Note:**

> I had stopped writing fic years ago (and I mean *years*) but after Monstrous I just became obsessed with the hunter on the table. This is his story.
> 
> Spoiler light, but some are unavoidable in a "some people survive and here is how" way. They're vague, but they're there.
> 
> I feel I should warn for having recently rewatched "Aguirre: The wrath of god" which I actually hate but have to engage with periodically for my day job. Upon rereading, it feels like it might have spilled over more than I'd hoped for. Thankfully though the narrative is kind of the reverse of Aguirre and there are absolutely no boats in trees, because otherwise I'd be all KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE! (yes even though I wrote it.)

It’s not like they didn’t know it was possible.Every family had a story of hearing about it happening.Even given the way rumors spread in a community as reclusive and insular as theirs, the ubiquity of the story meant it had to have happened at least once.But Braeden survived unchanged, and everyone knew how deep those claws had gone.She made no attempt to hide them, vicious tracks above the skimpy tank tops she preferred, badges of honor as potent as any general’s chest of medals and braids, the Battle of Deucalion written on her skin for all to see (and he’d worked a job with Braeden once, and she was exactly the kind of batshit to name her scars, flaunting them as a symbol of a job well-done.) She’d survived, and she’d survived human. So yes, it had probably happened at least once, but had no impact on their overall risk calculations. 

 

And then Kate.

 

The Calaveras had made sure to spread the word.There could be no question of an Argent using her name to get support she didn’t merit.The trail of shredded bodies she left only reinforced their message.She was the feral nightmare they all feared, and it was done by claws.Body armor improved, as did scope quality and distance weapon training. Kill shots from 100 meters or more became the preference.At that distance, you couldn’t see the color of their eyes, but if a few golds went down with the reds and the blues, no big loss.Everyone knew a gold was just a blue waiting to happen.

 

That was his first mistake, getting too close.But she was just _standing_ there, $250,000, quaking in her sneakers with her eyes closed, and he forgot; forgot the risk evaluation they’d done on McCall; decided that even at $25M it wasn’t worth directly taking on such a complete unknown as a True Alpha.The more adventurous and/or avaricious among them pointed out that their own research and the mere fact of being a True Alpha added up to absolutely zero evidence McCall had ever actually killed anyone, and really how dangerous could a 17 year old high school student be, but cooler heads had prevailed.An Alpha, any Alpha, was a killing machine, and just because they hadn’t found the evidence didn’t mean it hadn’t happened.It just meant that best friend of his had learned something from his Sheriff father and was really good at hiding the bodies.Hell, maybe the Sheriff was even helping them.Where there was one race traitor in the family, there were probably more.  

 

So yeah, he grew too focused on the payday they’d chosen, standing in front of him like the most ironic lamb to slaughter ever, forgetting this lamb was under the protection ofthe payday they’d rejected, and lost his situational awareness.And then he was on his back, the face of a demon filling his vision, while he struggled to defend himself as he felt the claws sink threw his useless body armor into suddenly vulnerable flanks, the flashes of gunfire echoed by the flashes in his vision as adrenaline flooded and he saw death’s gates open.And just as suddenly, it was over, the demon’s weight off him, former targets’ voices shouting each other’s name, and all his alleged brothers either dead or gone, faded away into the shadows and smoke.The bitter taste of saltpetre coated his tongue and he took a choked breath, then another, falling off the table and staggering out the door, forgotten in the rush to retreat or recover. 

 

 

The adrenaline dissipated quickly, but not so soon that he wasn’t completely, irretrievably lost.They had set fallback and secondary fallback reconnoitre points, but in his rush to get away, he’d forgotten about them and was now in some anonymous part of the forest preserve surrounding Beacon Hills on three sides.He’d memorized the main trails and landmarks as part of the mission prep, but it was full night and he couldn’t remember anything he’d passed in his desperation to flee McCall and his pack.He knew if he went in far enough there was a river, and several cliffs overlooking one side of the city, but neither of those were of any use to him in the pitch black.When he didn’t show up at the muster point, the rest would assume he was another corpse on the warehouse floor and that would be that.Theirs was not a sentimental lifestyle, and dead was dead.He’d seen Argent at the warehouse, fighting side-by-side with the wolves, and knew that whatever their different agendas, their playbook was the same.The most likely fate for those left behind was a very hot fire, the better to destroy the evidence with.The truth was he was probably dead anyway.With the adrenaline drop had come the dimming of his eyesight, the noticeable difficulty in breathing, and the blood soaking into his uniform. He pushing himself off the tree currently holding him up, and almost immediately fell to his knees, only barely able to support his head.Irrationally deciding he didn’t want to die itchy, he took the bare minimum of time to verify there was no poison oak nearby, curled up behind a log, and waited for the end.  

 

It came as a bitter disappointment when he actually woke up the next morning.The pain was almost more than anyone could bear.Each breath was an agony as he felt the blood bubbling sluggishly, feeling almost like he was suffocating trying to get any oxygen, while the various claw marks sparked across his skin and he felt the high fever one would expect after spending the night in the woods with several dozen open wounds.He rolled over, wretching with pain as he tried to right himself.But the pain was what he deserved.He knew that now.His dreams had been a torment as bad as the physical, visions of his mother and uncle excoriating him for betraying their code and his father’s memory by hunting for profit.That was not their way.That was not their mission.And this, the fever distorting his vision as he tried to sit up against the elephant parked against his chest, was his punishment.Dying in the woods of Beacon Hills, surrounded by land sacred to those he hunted, unmourned and unmissed, was all he deserved.He was Codebreaker, and his fate, like Kate Argent’s would be someday, was an unmarked grave forgotten by all.Still, if he was to die in these woods, he still had this irrational thing about dying itchy, so he was annoyed when he saw in the early morning sun that there was, in fact, poison oak perilously near his log.With some effort, and help from a convenient branch, he levered himself up, chose a direction at random, and went to seek his tomb.

 

Having chosen to die in the wild, it was of course inevitable that his random direction actually took him back to a developed area.He heard the signs of human occupation, cars and radios and children playing basketball, from a reasonable distance and was able to skirt around, keeping to the deep woods while deciding what to do.His thought process was disturbed at first by the unrelenting fever and pain, requiring he periodically drop down and breath, as much as he could, trying to get his heart and stomach under control.But as he slowly made his way through the woods, he realized what was really bothering him, and suddenly he was furious at himself, so angry his vision momentarily whited out as he realized what he was feeling.He was _hungry_.He was hungry, and his clothes felt sticky and he wanted a shower and maybe a change and all the other petty human comforts that this neighborhood of small tidy homes reminded him of.He was _dying_ ; he’d _decided_ , it was his _punishment,_ and suddenly all he can think about is clean shorts?This was the worst form of self-indulgence.He needed to get away from this street and its temptations, go back to the woods and…. meditate or something.He’d never meditated before, but maybe it was time to start.But of course, once an idea enters your head like that, it becomes all you can think about, and suddenly just as bad as dying with a poison oak rash was the thought of dying in clothes stiff with blood.He needed something to change into before he retreated to his chosen fate. 

 

Surveying the small homes, he quickly identified the ones with outdoors clotheslines and from there worked his way silently along the back, quickly surveying the offerings and finally identifying one that had men’s jeans and t-shirts that looked like the right size and seemed to be unoccupied.He quickly ran through the yard, grabbing the pre-selected items and getting out of the yard in under a minute. The adrenaline rush made him almost giddy, although the pain after was twofold what it had been.Hidden behind a convenient rock, far enough from the houses that he could only barely hear the loudest noises,he verified the sizes were close enough and stripped out of his caked and disgusting uniform, rescuing his weapons and nutrition bars out of habit, hiding the shredded fabric under leaves and brush.Ironically, clean shorts were not in the offing, it apparently having not been underwear day for whoever it was he stole from, but he could hear the rushing water from the river now, and decided a quick dipto get off the blood and sweat would be enough for his purposes.After all, he didn’t have to be clean-clean.Just clean enough for dying.

 

He was deep into the woods now, as clean as a California river could get him, dressed in stolen clothes.And despite every hope and expectation he’d had, he woken up after a day spent preparing himself for death to see another dawn.The claw marks were scabbed over, starting to itch and the fever was less as well.The bubbling in his lungs was gone, and his vision was clear of the death shadows.

 

He wept.Oh, how he wept, defying every stereotype of his gender and his profession.Because maybe he wasn’t dying.Maybe his fate was not to be so easy as just allowing his injuries and the woods to combine forces and take him.If he was getting better, he would actually have to do something about it.He might have to be a more active participant in his death than he’d hoped.And he was scared.He’d never thought himself a coward, but this idea of putting the clip in his gun, chambering a round, and putting it to his temple, it scared him in a way that the thought of just dying hadn’t.But he couldn’t go back alive and disgraced, knowing what was waiting for him.His mother and uncle might be out of active hunting, but news of this would have made it to them by now.Everyone knew about the list, and everyone would have heard about its cancellation just in time for him to betray everything his family had believed for generations by joining up with the stupidest get-rich-quick scheme ever.If nature wasn’t going to do it for him, he would have to face his actions directly and take matters into his own hands.For a moment he flashed back to the moment McCall had turned the phone toward him and shown him the message from the Benefactor.“ALL CONTRACTS TERMINATED.” But that wasn’t true at all.He had one more contract to complete. On himself.  

 

As with the rest of the contracts he’d undertaken that week, it was one he was doomed to fail.At first, he pulled out his gun with every intention of just shooting himself and being done with it.As deep as he was in the woods, though, he could still hear the sounds of civilization and he panicked.If he could hear them, they could hear his gun.Part of his punishment was to be forgotten, not found with a fresh bullet hole.Picking a direction that felt… emptier somehow, he tried to find a place where the sound wouldn’t be heard and reported.Yet no matter where he went, the sounds followed, and after collapsing in despair under an overhang in the fading evening light, listening to what he figured must be a bar patio based on the music and inane date chatter, he ate the last of his nutrition bars and decided to try again in the morning.After the fade, he will ponder that moment, and why the person he was before had made what he would have thought of as such an obvious mistake.He should have known what was happening; should have realized, and ended it right then and there while he still could.With the advantage of distance though, it will become the mistake he cannot see as a mistake.Yes, he failed to fulfill the contract, but in his future, the person he becomes will not regret that failure.  

 

Waking the next morning, he realized several things at once.First, the fever was gone.Second, he was _starving,_ hunger a twisting hook in his guts.Third, when he absently patted a pocket looking for now finished nutrition bars, the wounds were gone.At first he froze, brain not processing what his eyes were seeing.The long scratch marks on his arms were completely healed, leaving only smooth skin.Ripping off his shirt he inspected his flanks, where the deepest claw wounds had been, finding nothing.He was exactly as he’s been three nights ago, laying out his gear in preparation for an insane mission they were too blind to see was doomed to fail.Immediately on that thought came the bitter laugh.No, not exactly the same.He wasn’t near the river anymore, but if he looked in its reflective waters, he knew what he’d see.Gold eyes.The mark of a monster.He hadn’t been hearing the people of Beacon Hills because he was near them.He’d been hearing them because he was now the hunted.

 

Who knows how long he would have sat there in a daze had he not heard something else.Really, his last mistake was also his first: forgetting about McCall.Or, more accurately, forgetting the ability an alpha has to call out his or her betas.He didn’t realize he was even in motion, responding automatically until he staggered into the clearing and found McCall, sitting against a tree, eyes closed and emitting a subvocal vibration he didn’t so much hear as feel with all his senses, collapsing on the forest floor and flooded with a bone-deep understanding that whatever came next, at that moment he was right where he was supposed to be.  

 

The two, alpha and beta, stare at each other, one in calm acceptance and the other with resignation, until he can’t stand it anymore.“If you’re going to kill me, just do it.It’s no less than I deserve.”

 

McCall shook his head.“Killing for revenge isn’t a road I want to go down.But is that what you really want, to die?”

 

He snorted.“Getting what I want is so far outside the cards right now.I broke the code, and now I’m what we are trained to hate.Dying is the only way I can redeem that.”

 

“Kate Argent broke the code and is still running around, claws and all.”

 

“Well, she is _definitely_ not someone I want to emulate,” he said morosely, thinking of the trail of destruction behind Kate.

 

“True,” McCall agreed, now doubt thinking of the same thing.“What if I gave you another option?Something between Kate and death?”

 

“What else is there?” he said, defeated.“I’m a monster.It’s inevitable.Better to dip a knife in wolfsbane and get it over with now.”

 

McCall stood, and suddenly he could _feel_ the alpha’s power, rolling around him in waves, taking his breath away, a force of nature stronger than hurricanes yet held in a cage made of steel and human will.This was so far beyond anything they had ever understood about the wolves, this capacity for absolute strength and absolute control.He momentarily spared a thought for how he would ever be able to put this feeling into words for the bestiary as McCall kneeled in front of him.“You are only a monster if you choose to be monstrous.You made that choice a few days ago, and it brought you here.Is that the choice you’d like to make again?”

 

He knew McCall could smell the shame rolling off him.Instead of answering he said “My dad was bit when I was five.I barely remember him, and still, all I ever wanted to be was just like him.”

 

McCall nodded, understanding what was unsaid.“You can, if you want. You’re my responsibility, and whatever your choice is, I will help you.But you don’t have to be like him, or like Kate.You could be like her.”

 

He hadn’t noticed Satomi walking into the clearing.She was so unassuming, so quiet, and now that he knew what to look for, so superbly under control.He wouldn’t have even picked her out as a wolf, much less an alpha.She caught his gaze and smiled as his eyes widened and he turned back to McCall.“Like her? not like you?”

 

McCall shook his head.“The deadpool may be gone but there are still forces at play here I need to deal with.I need Chris Argent on my side, and if he finds out a hunter survived and turned during the fight, I could lose him.I can’t risk that.Satomi will be able to teach you control without distractions and without the baggage I'd bring.And then we’d like to suggest you think about getting out of California.We have the clothes you abandoned and Mom can get us an unclaimed body we can use to fake your death here, but with all the attention this town gets from the Calaveras, it’s too big a risk for you if Araya finds out.”

 

“Where would I go?” he whispers, wondering why he is even continuing this discussion and not just asking for that wolfsbane-coated knife.  

 

“Upstate New York,” Satomi answered.“There’s a stable pack there looking for new blood.Totally off the radar, no trouble with hunters in years.Derek called them and they’re willing to take you provided you’re under control and share everything you know about hunters.”

 

“And Satomi goes with you and spends a few weeks teaching their members how to hide their scent,” McCall added.“Which is why you’ll stay here for a while first.Satomi refuses to go up in the middle of winter.”

 

“Hey, I’m an old lady, and they said something about six feet of snow,” she shot back.“No way I’m subjecting my California bones to that nonsense.”

 

“Old lady, my right ass cheek,” a fourth voice chimed in as the Stilinski kid stepped into the clearing.“You’ll outlive us all, Satomi.Scott, what’s the word? Braeden’s all excited about adding ‘corpse thief’ to her CV.”

 

“I don’t know,” McCall responded, turning back to the hunter.“It’s your decision.I’ll help you die if you want to follow the code, or we can fake your death and you can go with Satomi for now.”

 

He thought of Kate, a codebreaker turned by claws, and his father, dead at his own hand before his only son started kindergarten; the warehouse with McCall’s ghastly animal face over his while he coughed out his life's blood; how in better times they’d considered Satomi’s pack and noticed that not one of her betas had blue eyes.He opened his mouth to answer but to his surprise asked instead “How did you know that I was out here?”  

 

McCall grinned again, and for a moment looked like nothing more than an average 17 year old boy.“Of all that houses you could have stolen clothes off the line from, you picked one belonging to a deputy, and one with a unique scent of his own.He was complaining about someone swiping his favorite jeans, and the next thing we know we’re digging up your tac vest in the woods.I took one whiff and knew I had to find you before anyone else.So yeah, stealing Parrish’s laundry.That was your first mistake.”

 

He thought back, past his failure to recognize the symptoms, and his blind flight out of the warehouse, to the night before the hunt had started, when he’d put his hand up at “all those in favor?” and said “No, I don’t think that was my first mistake, actually” as he stood and moved toward Satomi.

 

 

 

Epilogue

 

It is six weeks before he could sleep through the night without nightmares of glowing red eyes, Satomi’s hand on his neck as he wakes up gasping in terror with the sheets in shreds around his claws.It is three months before he learned to control the shift under her patient coaching, and almost a year before he could do it without reflexive shame.He was in New York by then, getting comfortable with this new pack, somewhere between McCall’s band of gung-ho crusaders and Satomi’s monkish crew and somehow, as a result, the most human of the three.Of all the possible ordinary, un-notable career choices available, this alpha taught middle school.At Satomi's request, a quiet word from the Fathers Stilinski and McCall in the right ear had gotten him a civilian position with the local LEOs managing equipment.A lifetime of training guaranteed he was good at it, and he found the work rebuilding rifles and inspecting tactical gear that rarely got used in this quiet rural setting rewarding.Because of him people would be that tiniest bit safer when circumstances required.And then it was years, and there was a sweet woman who felt the past was the past and redemption was real while they baked fresh apple pies and little new people together, and he still hated the winters but had at least learned how to use a snow blower and it had been ages since anyone had asked him with awe if it was true he had been turned by the True Alpha, capitals firmly voiced.When Braeden had come through with a few more scars and been just as crazy but caught him up on all the hunter gossip it had caused only some nostalgia and not profound self-loathing and at last he knew he was fine.He was good.And he said to Braeden “Hey, next time you see McCall could you tell him I said hi?” and Braeden had nodded, her usual meaningless grin momentarily something deeper and he knew she’d heard what he really wanted to say.He’d made mistakes, so many mistakes, but they had carried him to this place, into the daily rhythm of work and family, sending the kids off to Kindergarten and full moon runs and long nights snuggled in with the rest of his pack, into the ridiculous winters and warm summer days scented with hay and milkweed.In his more frivolous moments, after those three days had faded into a lifetime of equally important memories, into the background of marriage and fatherhood and professional accomplishment, he will sometimes declare that while yes, he was the hunter turned in battle by the claws of Scott McCall, that wasn’t what had saved his life that night.“Really,” he’ll say, “it all comes down to this weird thing I have about poison oak.”

 


End file.
